RINO Hunters: Nice Six-Term Senate Career You Had There, Dick Lugar

Posted on | May 4, 2012 | 32 Comments

In the span of barely a month, polls in the Indiana Republican primary race between incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar and challenger Richard Mourdock have gone from a 7-point lead for Lugar to a 10-point lead for Mourdock. With the primary now just four days away, the headlines:

Dick Lugar In Deep Trouble, A New Poll Finds
— Huffington Post

Poll: Lugar trails Mourdock by 10 points
— The Hill

Indiana senator: Poll gives
Mourdock sizable lead over Lugar
— Indianapolis Star

Thirty-six years in Washington is enough, and Lugar represents a style of Republican “centrism” that has outlived its usefulness.

The leftward drift of Democrats in the past couple of decades makes compromise increasingly untenable. Whatever basis there remained for genuine bipartisanship in Congress died during the second Bush term. The 2006 election brought into office a crowd of Democrats beholden to the far left, demanding radical measures on every issue from gay rights to global warming to health care. This was bad news for the Arlen Specter/Mike Castle type of “centrist” Republicans, just as it was for the Rick Boucher/Barron Hill type of “Blue Dog” Democrats, who were all but wiped out in 2010.

Liberal media types, always sympathetic to GOP moderates, like to portray the primary defeats of guys like Lugar as indicative of right-wing extremism among the Republican electorate, but the exact opposite it true: The problem is that the Democratic Party’s agenda is now so extreme that any Republican who tries to compromise with the opposition ends up embracing policies rejected by common-sense GOP primary voters.

The failure of Lugar to see the handwriting on the wall — either to pull back from his more liberal positions, or to retire rather than seek re-election at age 80 — is emblematic of how politicians lose touch with voter sentiment after decades in office. Lugar is a throwback to the Gerald Ford era, a fossil relic of a bygone age.

Good-bye, Dick.

Category: Election 2012, Indiana, Republicans

Comments

32 Responses to “RINO Hunters: Nice Six-Term Senate Career You Had There, Dick Lugar”

richard mcenroe
May 4th, 2012 @ 8:14 pm

It’s a shame. You know Deadeye Dick Lugar wouldn’t have stood for those billboards, by cracky…
Adobe_Walls
May 4th, 2012 @ 8:28 pm

“style of Republican “centrism” that has outlived its usefulness.”
Centrism never had any usefulness it has always been a quagmire the left lures conservatives into, where we are as a nation is the sum of all those compromises.
joethefatman
May 4th, 2012 @ 8:31 pm

buh byeeee!
McGehee
May 4th, 2012 @ 8:47 pm

Lugar’s scalp hanging on the tent pole will certainly look better than Bob Bennett’s.
NeoSexist
May 4th, 2012 @ 8:47 pm

Send him to Zululand they have a nice Rino reserve there.
http://99counties.org/?p=672
Adobe_Walls
May 4th, 2012 @ 8:53 pm

He like Romney are not RINOs they epitomise what it means to be a Republican.
ThePaganTemple
May 4th, 2012 @ 9:17 pm

When is Orrin Hatch’s primary? It’s going to be interesting to see his reaction if Luger does get beaten, especially by a wide margin. I bet he’ll really be sweating bullets. It will be fun watching him try to reach out to the Tea Party hahahaha.
NeoSexist
May 4th, 2012 @ 9:23 pm

Much like Justin Timberlake, I’m bringing Republican back. Back to Reagan and AuH20
joethefatman
May 4th, 2012 @ 9:24 pm

i’m thinking hatch’s pants will be brown and he’ll be able to build a fireplace
Evi L. Bloggerlady
May 4th, 2012 @ 9:25 pm

Don’t let the door hit you on the ass when you go out…oh by the way, Illinois is to the left.
Adjoran
May 4th, 2012 @ 10:58 pm

Amen to that!
Adobe_Walls
May 4th, 2012 @ 11:12 pm

Just because Reagan temporarily lead the Party doesn’t make it the party of Reagan. That was a short lived coup and took 16 years happen. Then look what came next Bush 41 and then the Caligula period under Bush 43. The Republican establishment humored us for a while because that was a way to hang on to power and they’ll do it again but only if they have to, this time they don’t.
Pathfinder's wife
May 4th, 2012 @ 11:41 pm

Hey, that’s not funny 😛

Wisconsin is much nicer — all those lakes…and the cheese…and KY, so much warmer, and Derby Day!
Pathfinder's wife
May 4th, 2012 @ 11:44 pm

…and it’s safer being a politico in those two states.

Ours are so stressed they wind up ODing on aspirin every few years, or decide to spend more time honing their shop skills.
John Higgins1990
May 5th, 2012 @ 12:14 am

Can we now focus on unseating Eric Cantor?
Adjoran
May 5th, 2012 @ 12:26 am

Lugar’s problem has absolutely NOTHING to do with his age or the length of his service. He’s been auditioning for Secretary of State for the last 25 years at least, and would have jumped at an offer from a Prez of either party.

But old Strom Thurmond was faithful to the conservative cause right up until the end, when his health failed. Nonetheless, he still had a better attendance record at Senate votes and committee meetings in his last two years than Barack Obama did in his.

Lugar went off the reservation because of ambition and self-importance, not because of his tenure.
Adjoran
May 5th, 2012 @ 12:35 am

Hatch will win easily. Bennett would have won easily if he had made the primary, but he was caught completely off guard by the challengers and Tea Party activists who took over the convention, leaving him in third place there and not qualifying for the primary ballot under Utah’s system.
ThePaganTemple
May 5th, 2012 @ 12:56 am

Yeah, but staying in power too long affects some people that way.
ThePaganTemple
May 5th, 2012 @ 12:58 am

Maybe, but I’m thinking a good, solid victory by Mourdock might inspire the insurgents in Utah to outperform expectations. I guess it all depends on who Hatch’s primary opponent will be.
Zilla of the Resistance
May 5th, 2012 @ 8:15 am

Now how about a Conservative challenger to send Cryin’ John Boehner into the sunset also?
OldmanRick
May 5th, 2012 @ 8:31 am

Hopefully one more rino bites the dust. TEA party, you rock.
rosalie
May 5th, 2012 @ 9:17 am

He’s the next one that should go. They’re just power crazy at this point.
Stacy’s take on Lugar « The Radio Patriot
May 5th, 2012 @ 9:18 am

[…] The path to McCain’s place begins here. […]
JeffS
May 5th, 2012 @ 9:29 am

So taxpayers should fund Lugar’s perpetual campaign for Secretary of State?

I think not.
Pathfinder's wife
May 5th, 2012 @ 10:55 am

This is true, and it is a mistake to get rid of a good legislator simply due to years of service.

However…it is also equally bad to hold on to one that’s gone rotten 😉
Hot Tea or Weak Kool-Aid? | Daily Pundit
May 5th, 2012 @ 11:04 am

[…] Tea or Weak Kool-Aid? Posted on May 5, 2012 8:04 am by Bill Quick RINO Hunters: Nice Six-Term Senate Career You Had There, Dick Lugar : The Other McCain Thirty-six years in Washington is enough, and Lugar represents a style of Republican […]
ThePaganTemple
May 5th, 2012 @ 11:36 am

Can you imagine what Boehner’s farewell speech would be like? He’d be bawling so bad you probably wouldn’t be able to understand a single word he said.
JollyMan
May 5th, 2012 @ 11:37 am

I hope the grassroots takes the right lesson from this.

RECRUIT QUALITY CHALLENGERS

If some Christine O’Donnell-type dingbat activist woke up one day and decided she wanted to be a US Senator (despite having zero elected experience) and decided to challenge Lugar, I’d support the incumbent, but if you get field a proven vote getter like Mourdock, we can rid of these RINOs without slitting our own throats by turning over seats to the Democrats.

I’m really looking forward to Lindsey Graham in 2014.
ThePaganTemple
May 5th, 2012 @ 11:49 am

Lindsey Graham isn’t going anywhere until he gets good and damn ready to go. People assume South Carolina is so far to the right Graham is lucky he isn’t tarred and feathered. The reality is, SC is chock full of RINOs. And there is also a large contingent of military voters, both active duty and veterans, the majority of which appreciate his service to them and will vote to retain him.

Like the old saying goes, the only way you’re going to get rid of that guy is if you catch him in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.

If you want my advice, it would be concentrate on finding the live boy. Or a dead one. Because otherwise, get ready for another six years of John McCain’s darling little butt boy.
Boreal Supremacy: Bruce Bartlett’s Tendentious History of Partisanship : The Other McCain
May 5th, 2012 @ 12:24 pm

[…] he recounts? (Just last night, before I’d seen Bartlett’s article, I discussed the same history from a different perspective.)Just for example, we might point to the key role of California and the rise of Ronald […]
billinlv
May 5th, 2012 @ 3:29 pm

There is something much more sinister than ambition and self importance at work here. The US Congress is the most exclusive club in the world, lavishly funded by and regularly enhanced by taxpayers whether they want to or not. Where else can you pass laws that all the peons have to abide by but from which you exempt yourself? Where else can you delegate your entire job to others but still collect a highly enviable paycheck and extensive expense reimbursement? Where else can you get away with not reading, knowing, or understanding the content and effect of the so called legislation upon which you vote?
Once you get membership in this club, you can’t leave because you can’t wait to sell you soul in return for being allowed to stay. The result: pathetic creeps like kennedy doing untold damage to this country; senile 80 and 90 years olds hanging on by their fingernails and held upright so they can “vote”; sanctimonius freaks and frauds like mccain and his little buddy graham; and then we get to the marxists, racists and serious crap weasals starting with pope nancy pelosi.
Since mere mortals can not resist its allure, the institution must be significantly changed–or–the length of time you can be a member must be significantly limited. My preference is both.
Shockingly, grassroots support for RINOs evaporates, leaving Dick Lugar grasping at straws (and Leftists) | Rid Congress of RINO's
May 6th, 2012 @ 1:29 pm

[…] But, if he loses the primary, perhaps Lugar can run in the general as a democrat […]